REVELATION – PART 1

IS GOD A TEACHER?

            For those of us who believe in God as Creator of the Universe, there are two religious approaches to life – deism and theism.
            Deism deeply influenced many of the European enlightenment philosophers.  Perhaps the most famous American deist was the author of our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson.  Deism sees God as too transcendent, too distant, too “wholly other,” to be involved in the affairs of us mere mortals.  If God is unchangeable, the “unmoved mover” to quote Aristotle, then God is not moved by what we humans do on this earth.  For God to be affected by our actions would make God changeable, dependent upon us.  The deist God is far too distant to care. 
            If we humans need to know how to behave in this world, the only source for our knowledge is pure reason.  God did not communicate any kind of wisdom to us.  That is why Jefferson could write, “A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity, that ever were written.”  In other words, there is more wisdom in Shakespeare than in the Bible.
            Personally, I prefer to embrace theism, which teaches that God cares deeply about what we humans do.  I was greatly influenced in my thinking by the neo-Hassidic philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose most famous book is entitled God in Search of Man.  Humanity is not simply the crown of God’s creation, God cares deeply about what we do.  Heschel speaks of the pathos of God.  (In other words, God is the moved mover.)  God is like a parent when it comes to humanity.  “Like a father has compassion upon his children, so the Lord has compassion upon His children.”  (Psalms 103:13)
            If God is like a loving parent, the number one task of a parent is to teach his or her children.  A fundamental teaching of the great theistic faiths – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – is that God is a teacher.  There is wisdom about how to live, which God in some mysterious way, has communicated to humanity.  The theme of our discussion over the next several weeks will be how to distill that wisdom, interpret it, and live by it.  But central is the belief that God did reveal teachings to humanity.  The term we use for God’s revealed wisdom is revelation.  And theism usually implies divine revelation.
            How did God reveal God’s wisdom to us?   The Orthodox of various faiths would say that revelation happened in discreet words and letters.  The Bible is literally God’s revelation.  God sent a message to us in actually letters, just as we send information over a modem in discreet bits and bytes.  The actual words of the Holy Scripture become precious, in that they are the literal words which God spoke.  This is the basis for those who seek secret codes and messages in the Bible, believing that God would hide various insights in the flow of letters and words.
            The liberals of various faiths believe that God’s communication occurred in far more subtle ways.  Perhaps they happened in dreams or visions of certain wise individuals.  But ultimately, certain great humans beings throughout history were blessed with unbelievable insight into the question, “What does God expect of us humans?”  To Jews, the man with the greatest insight into God’s wisdom was Moses our Teacher.  “Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord singled out face to face.”  (Deuteronomy 34:10)
            Whether we choose an orthodox or more liberal understanding of revelation, we theists agree on a fundamental issue.  God cares enough about humanity that God was willing to share wisdom as to how we are to live our lives.  Ultimately, God is a teacher.

REVELATION – PART 2

WHAT IS TORAH?

            If God is a teacher, what are God’s teachings?   With this question, we must look at a word that is at the center of the Jewish faith – “Torah.”  Torah has been translated many ways, but I believe the most authentic translation is “teachings.”  The Torah is God’s teachings to us, both as Jews and as human beings.
            What is Torah?  The most basic definition is that the Torah consists of the five books of Moses – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  In the synagogue the Torah is handwritten on a scroll according to very precise and ancient rules.  It is taken out and publicly read on the Sabbath and festivals as well as certain times during the week.  Traditionalists will say that every word and every letter of this written Torah was God given.  However, modern scholars see various sources from various time periods in the five books that make up the written Torah.
            The word “Torah” has a broader definition than these five books.  In Jewish tradition we speak about the written Torah and the oral Torah.  The oral Torah is the long series of elucidations and interpretations that went along with the written Torah.  Most of these were set down in the tractates of the Talmud, while others became part of the Midrash and other Rabbinic literature.  Many would use the word Torah for other writings – responsa, philosophy, and mysticism. Torah became much broader than simply five books; Torah consists of an entire corpus of teachings.
            The Rabbis would expand the definition of Torah even further.  In every generation, whatever a student of Torah says before his teacher was already revealed to Moses at Mt. Sinai.  (Yerushalmi Peah 2:6)  When I first read this, I thought it was nonsense.  Now, after much thought, I realize that this statement contains a profound truth.  Torah is not a one time event, but is an ongoing process throughout history.  In every generation we try to uncover God’s teachings and apply them to reality.  Torah will develop and change as humanity develops and changes. 
             There is a famous passage how Moses traveled far into the future and sat in the back of Rabbi Akiba’s academy.  Akiba was teaching Torah and Moses did not understand a word Akiba was saying.  Moses grew faint, and only recovered when Akiba said, “This is the Torah Moses gave us at Mt. Sinai.”  (Menachot 29b)  Rabbi Akiba’s understanding of Torah during the days of Talmud was different than Moses’ understanding of Torah in the desert.  And our understanding of Torah in our contemporary world is different than Rabbi Akiba’s understanding of Torah.
            Sometimes I think it is best to think about a heavenly Torah and an earthly Torah.  The heavenly Torah is God’s actual intention for us humans, if only we mortals had the ability to read God’s mind.  The earthly Torah is our interpretations, according to our best understanding.   That understanding will evolve as we humans evolve.
            I thought of the perfect metaphor for this as I was helping my high school age son with his geometry homework.  We were doing Euclidean geometry.  As a former math major, I understand non-Euclidean geometry.  But there is no way my son, at his present level of development, could understand this.  There is pure mathematics that exists in the world of ideas, what Plato called the world of forms.  The third grader studying arithmetic can comprehend some of this math, the tenth grader studying geometry can comprehend more, and the college student studying calculus can comprehend more.  But even Einstein could not comprehend all that is possible to know in mathematics.
            So it is with Torah.  Only God knows all there is to know about the teachings we humans need to hear.  As we humans evolve, we will comprehend more and more of God’s wisdom for us.  Torah changes with each generation.  So, over the generations, we humans grow closer and closer to God’s ideal for us

REVELATION – PART 3

THE ESSENCE OF TORAH

            The Torah is God’s teaching for the Jewish people and for humanity.  Last week we spoke about the heavenly Torah and the earthly Torah.  The heavenly Torah is God’s actual intention for us humans, if only we mortals had the ability to read God’s mind.  The earthly Torah is our interpretations, according to our best understanding. 

            Can we humans ever know the essence of that heavenly Torah?  What does God really want to teach us?  Various attempts have been made in Rabbinic literature to find the essence of Torah.  For example, the Talmud shares the teaching of Rabbi Simlai (Makkot 23b – 24a).  Moses gave Israel 613 commandments, David boiled it down to eleven commandments, Micah summarized it in three commandments, and Isaiah explained it in two commandments.  Finally Habakkuk came along and summarized the entire Torah in one commandment – “The righteous shall live by his faith.”  (Habakkuk 2:4)

            An even more famous example is found in the teaching of the sage Hillel to a potential convert.  (Shabbat 31a)  The non-Jew wanted to convert to Judaism, but only if Hillel will teach him the entire Torah while standing on one foot.  The sage Shammai had already thrown the man out of his study.  But the gentle Hillel answered with a beautiful, oft-quoted reply – “What is hateful to you, do not do to others.  All the rest is commentary.  Go and learn.”

            With all due respect for these great sages of Jewish history, I would like to make my own attempt to find the essence of God’s teaching for us humans.  What is the message behind the teachings of the Torah?  What is the meta-message, to use modern philosophical language?  What does God want us humans to know and to do?  And what does God want the Jewish people, the people of the covenant, to teach the world?  What is the essence of the heavenly Torah?

            My understanding begins with evolution.  We humans have evolved from animals, and we share much with the animal kingdom.  But we are not mere animals.  We are a different level of creation, containing a little bit of angel, created in the image of God.  In my mind, the essence of the Torah is that we are to rise above the animal within us and reach towards the Godly within us.  I believe every piece of wisdom that grows out of the Torah, whether loving our neighbor as ourselves, sanctifying the Sabbath, or achieving holiness in all our relationships, are all attempts to reach beyond the animal within us.  We must help ourselves to evolve to a higher level of being, a level that is in keeping with our possession of God’s image.

            This vision explains one of the most perplexing stories in the written Torah – the Garden of Eden.  The story is a metaphor for the evolution of humanity.  In the Garden we were mere animals, naked and not ashamed.  All our biological needs were cared for, just as God cares for animals on the earth.  Yet we humans were dissatisfied.   We had the capability of knowledge on a higher level.  And so we ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  With that act we lost the Garden.  But we gained something more important, the ability to know right from wrong.  And by eating of the Tree of Knowledge, we gained the ability to make moral choices.  We humans reached a new level of being, with the ability to become God’s partners in the evolution of the world.

            How can we move beyond the mere animal within us?  I want to share one wonderful example I learned from a leading Orthodox rabbi and physician, Dr. Abraham Twersky.  I once heard him give a lecture on spirituality.  He shared his definition of spirituality?  Imagine a group of tigers eating their prey, with a hungry jackal standing by waiting for the tigers to finish.  When one tiger turns to another and says, leave a little for the jackal, that is spirituality.  Obviously no real tiger would ever do that.  Tigers live by their animal instincts.  But we humans are capable of moving beyond our animal instincts.

            This is the essence of the heavenly Torah.  God wants us humans to move beyond the animal into the angel within us.  The earthly Torah is the attempt by the Rabbis in each generation to apply this teaching in the real world.  How we apply the Torah in our day to day lives in this world will be at the center of many of these essays over the coming months.

REVELATION – PART 4

THE ESSENCE OF TORAH (CONTINUED)

            Last week I tried to pin down the essence of the heavenly Torah, the teachings that God has for us human beings.  I wrote, “… the essence of the Torah is that we are to rise above the animal within us and reach towards the Godly within us.”  We may have evolved from the animal world, but we dwell on a different level.  We contain “the breath of God,” to quote the Torah, and must constantly strive to act on the Godliness in our souls.

            Today I want to develop this idea further.  Perhaps the easiest way to develop this is to explore three religious viewpoints.  These can be summarized by the phrases – “live within nature,” “escape from nature,” and “transform nature.”  Each of these three views is extremely influential among the faiths of the world, and each has somewhat influenced Judaism.  Nonetheless, I believe only the third view contains the essence of Torah.

            Religious Viewpoint #1 (live within nature) – We humans are part of the natural world, and we must act in keeping with our natures.  We are animals, perhaps a bit more intelligent but often not as wise as our fellow creatures.  We must live at one with nature.  This view is at the core of ancient paganism and contemporary neo-paganism.  To quote Margot Adler book Drawing Down the Moon, “Most Neo-Pagans sense an aliveness and `presence’ in nature.  They are usually polytheists or animists or pantheists, or two or three of these things at once.  They share the goal of living in harmony with nature and they tend to view humanity’s `advancement’ and separation from nature as the prime source of alienation.”

            To illustrate this view, I often share a story I first heard in the movie The Crying Game.  A scorpion asks a frog to take him across a river.  The frog says, if you crawl on my back to swim across the river, you will sting me and I will die.  The scorpion replies, if you die, then I will fall in the river and drawn.  The frog agrees, and allows the scorpion to crawl on his back.  Half way across the river, the frog feels a scorpion sting.  He cries out, why did you do that; now we both will die.  The scorpion replies, I could not help it; it is in my nature. 

            Early Judaism fought against the primitive paganism of the indigenous peoples of the ancient Near East.  God was not to be found in the various high places or in giant trees.  God transcends nature.  And we humans, although we are part of nature, must also learn to transcend nature.

            Religious Viewpoint #2 (escape from nature) – The natural world is not the ultimate reality.  In fact it is an illusion, a place of limitation and suffering.  The ultimate reality exists in some other realm, perhaps in the next world.  The purpose of life is ultimately to escape from this world and connect to that higher reality.

            This view is extremely influential in many of the Eastern religions.  However, it also exists in the religions of the West.  Often the first question some people ask when discussing religion is, “Will you make it to heaven?”   I hear this point of view when someone says at a funeral, “so-and-so is now in a better world.”  (I often hear lay people say this at Jewish funerals.  But I have never heard a rabbi say this.  Somehow, this idea is not in the main stream of Judaism, which emphasizes living in this world.)  We may have a little bit of angel in us.  But we are not angels; we are humans, fated to live in the natural world.  In fact, we are part animal and part angel.  In the balance between these two parts of our psyche, we find the essence of Torah.

            Religious Viewpoint #3 (transform nature) – Animals live within nature.  Angels live beyond nature.  But only we humans have been given the ability to transform nature.  We have been given both the ability and the duty to move beyond the natural world, helping to perfect God’s creation.  God needs us to act in this world, becoming God’s agents to make this a better world.

            That is why the essence of Torah is never to accept the world as it is.  That is why, when we see disease, we must work to find a cure.  That is why, when we see suffering, we must work to relieve it.  That is why, when we see war, we must find ways of peace.  That is why, when we see oppression, we must work for liberation.  And that is why, unlike the scorpion in my story, when we see improper behavior in ourselves, we must never say, “it is in my nature.”

            God created us humans with a mandate.  We must live in this world and try to perfect it as a kingdom of God.  Over the coming weeks we will look at some of the details of Torah, trying to apply this mandate of transforming the world to the reality of day-to-day life.  The essence of Torah is God’s transforming vision of what it means to be a human being.  It is a vision that has changed the history of the world.